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A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

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Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#921

Post by minimuffins »

shakezula wrote: post #910
umvi wrote: post #899

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still want better working conditions though, for me and for everybody. What do you suggest? Well, a re-brand for one. Don't call it a "union". Call it something else if it is something else. If you make a union patterned after traditional ones, why shouldn't it become a corrupt entity 50 years later just like all the current corrupt unions?

I'm very pro-labor/pro-worker, whatever you want to call it, and I'd be all about using a different term than union. It's a loaded term that has all sorts of negative connotation. New decade, new world of tech, new term for collectivized labor. I will admit, the police union problem is a hard counter. It's a solvable problem though, I think. Maybe we should bring "guild" back into fashion.

Guild has a connotation of workmanship and craft expertise, industriousness, etc. I do like that.

But there is also an existing phenomenon of various things calling themselves guilds (there are various "freelancers'" guilds, e.g.), but they do not function as an economic bargaining institution at all. They're just professional organizations where people exchange contact info for networking purposes.

I think there's no getting around the task at hand: rehabilitating the concept of a union of workers with shared interests and goals (even shared fraternity, if I'm gonna be super sentimental). It's capital, it's labor, it's unions. New century, same basic stuff.

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#922

Post by erklik »

Apocryphon wrote: post #895
Shish2k wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unions could fix [tech interviews] Is the problem really “we know how to fix tech interviews, but the upper management don’t like it”? Going by HN discussion I thought that the problem was “There are tens of totally different interview methods, everybody thinks one method is obviously the best and all the others suck, but nobody can agree on which one method that is”, and I’m not sure how a union would fix that :P

Well, as much as people hate certification and standardization in this industry, even something as simple as "a tech union or the IEEE or Triplebyte produces a standard algorithms /data structures interview exam, candidates take that once and are certified for at least 5-10 years, and technical interviews then become more domain-specific or at least less academic", could be a nice alternative to the status quo. Go th…

> Go through the Leetcode gauntlet once and get credentialed

The issue here is thinking that the Leetcode gauntlet matters at all in most jobs. A certification for Leetcode shouldn't matter when all I do is HTML, CSS, and JS to call various APIs.

I do agree with the general idea that some certification could prove some base level knowledge, where furthur testing beyond that could take place. The issue lies in deciding what is "base level knowledge".

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#923

Post by shrimpx »

karl11 wrote: post #60

Don't think we've ever seen Hollywood in the modern era without unions, so not sure how you can claim it's "undeniable" the industry is better off. We basically have no clue if it's better off or not. Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options as there is a single or just a few employers (e.g. Hollywood, teachers, coal mining towns, hospital staff, etc.). Unionizing at Goo…

> Unionizing at Google makes no sense, as there are thousands of tech companies hiring engineers in the valley

> they are trying other means to have their cake and eat it too.

I think you're basically correct but are making multiple slightly incorrect assumptions:

- That working at Google is comparable to any other tech company in terms of benefits and stability. In reality, only a few companies could compare. (Not everyone can work at a startup, etc.)

- That tech companies are wildly different in terms of culture and philosophy. In my experience, tech industry culture is hyper normalized and you see the same problems everywhere.

So it's not like a selfish "have their cake and eat it too", but more like they actually can't gain what they want by moving, so the remaining path is change from the inside.

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#924

Post by frongpik »

tomohawk wrote: post #896

It's sad that they're using card checks instead of secret ballots for the effort. Card checks are a tried and true method organizers use to intimidate people. Source: several family members worked in union shops. In many cases, they were forced to be part of the union to have a job.

What are the card checks?

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#925

Post by minimuffins »

julienb_sea wrote: post #916
minimuffins wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are all real problems, especially in a lot of today's older unions that have been completely hollowed out and have become a kind of do-nothing "labor aristocracy." They don't function as democratic institutions serving laborers' interests anymore, only their own narrow, elite, institutional needs--often institutional self-preservation at the expense of their members' interests. They're decrepit, corrupt dinosau…

Working conditions should be regulated reasonably at a societal level. This already exists in practice via OSHA and minimum wage regulations. Advocate for improved worker conditions via legislature, although be aware of the market counter-reaction of making certain jobs more expensive than they are worth. Industry-wide unions can work, they are widely used in Europe, but they essentially act as barriers to progress a…

Industry wide unions are the goal, but you don't just flip a switch and change to a society with industry wide unions.

We don't have industry wide unions in the United States because, although unions were on the rise in the first part of last century, they eventually got beaten down into their pathetic state after the Fordist compromise broke down.

> act as barriers to progress

They give workers a say in what counts as "progress." "Progress," to my mind, does not necessarily equal improvements in my quality of life. e.g. I used to not be constantly surveilled. Then some progress happened, and now I am. Am I better off?

What if we got to decide what technology to build instead of Google and the Pentagon?

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#926

Post by frongpik »

bane wrote: post #291

Most of the unions that we have here are public service/trades/transportation related and if I'm honest, the results have been very mixed. We used to have more manufacturing related unions, but with the direction manufacturing jobs have gone in the U.S. they're mostly just gone. The public service unions (e.g. firefighters, police etc.) seem to do a good job to protect their workers on one hand and keep them fairly p…

There's a small group of sjw activists there that want to run the show.

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#927

Post by dionidium »

sjg007 wrote: post #546
ignoramous wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, I've had people tell me that they don't support unions in tech because they'll be "paid less", or less competent engineers will be promoted faster. Yeah, a bizarre line of reasoning. Footballers first unionized in 1907 and haven't looked back since. Today, your average footballer (plying their trade in the upper tiers of English football) makes more in a month than most tech engineers make in a year (g…

In America, baseball unionization was what drove higher salaries.

It had the effect of driving up wages for veteran players. Collective bargaining in Major League Baseball produced service time provisions that artificially limit the salaries of young players while driving up the pay of established veterans.

Seniority provisions are a common feature of union contracts and they’re a direct wealth transfer from younger, generally poorer workers to older, more established employees.

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#928

Post by julienb_sea »

forbiddenvoid wrote: post #650
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago, my friend was part of a small movement to unionize a certain universally hated company that rhymes with Omfast. They thought it would be a home run given all of the nonsense that goes on there. As it turns out, selling people on the idea of unionizing is much harder than it sounds. People weren’t even necessarily afraid of the company, they just didn’t want to be in a union. They, too, gathered a small num…

It's also the case that the leadership of said company communicates (or did 12 years ago) anti-union rhetoric to their employees on a regular basis (starting from orientation) and requests employees to report any unionizing talk from other employees. Always with the same language about how unions are bad for employees, etc.

It's rather unfortunate that any rational counter-argument to unionization is automatically termed rhetoric or propaganda with the implication that it has no validity.

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#929

Post by notjustathrowa »

thu2111 wrote: post #565
pentagrama wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are "Red scare" for many. I thinks it comes down to ideology. Pro capitalists view unions with skepticism or hostility because challenges the system, pro socialists view as a way to fight the power structures and injustice. Other people just don't want to be involved in unions because is a sensitive topic and are afraid to lost their jobs.

Nobody in this union is going to fight against "injustice". Look at their list of demands. It's indeed a red scare because they are really, really red. For example, refusing to work with the defence industry - which country in the world would benefit most from a damaged US/European military? China! We can see what kind of union this is by the fact that: 1. They aren't going to try and bargain collectively 2. Their an…

Any manager at Google who wrote and distributed what Timnit did about diversity efforts (that they're pointless and should be stopped) would be fired on the spot. Every manager at Google knows this.

Re: A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize

#930

Post by subsubzero »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #824
subsubzero wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I talk to colleagues in tech about unions I hear a lot of misconceptions, seemingly based in stereotypes about what unions are for and who they serve Agree, things that a union can address: - Pay transparency, Have detailed info about pay bands, and ensure some new hire from a hot company doing the same job as you is not making 2-3x your salary. - Broken promotion process, at my company promotion is completely…

> " ...ensure some new hire from a hot company doing the same job as you is not making 2-3x your salary " Given the number of young people in software and entering software, seniority based pay and losing the ability to job hop for increased salary is pretty much the last thing on earth they would want. It would also kill the company's ability to hire top talent by being able to offer more money.

My example is based in real life, we hired a engineer from facebook and they matched his comp, which me and a few co-workers found out was 2.5x what we made. This person did the same job as us and contributed nothing out of the ordinary, he was also the same level as us which really stung. Stuff like this is rampant across tech and having secret pay bands and not upping your pay for existing hires(to match market) as its too high of an increase per corporate(also another real life example) just sucks. Especially when the CEO's net worth goes up 5x in the few years at the company.
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